Beating My “Video Game Addiction”
A Driver’s Training for Social Media Story
As a young adult I stood in a circle with a small group of members at a local church. Each person declared prayers one by one, and the pastor supplicated on my behalf. He requested, in front of everyone, that the Almighty would free me from my video game addiction.
Truth be told I left the meeting unchanged. Because I never had a video game addiction and hadn’t even played them in over a year. Sometimes I like to retcon that moment by imagining the pastor praying proactively. Maybe his prayers have perpetually been answered for 25 years.
I have no issues admitting tech compulsions. We were guests on a podcast this week talking about Know Curtains where I confessed a bad habit that was recently broken. At the end of each day I would unwind watching something on my phone as I lay in bed. Inevitably I would fall asleep within a couple of minutes, still resting the phone on a pillow “watching” the screen with my eyes closed. Then I’d be jolted awake when the phone slipped out of my fingers only to watch a couple more minutes of the next episode that Netflix autoplayed for me. Fall asleep. Snap awake. Repeat. That was my compulsion for years… until we finished Driver’s Training for Social Media and went through the online course as a family.
I recognized I had lost control. I had to find my phone before bedtime like a toddler needing his blanket. Ridding myself of that habit was a primary goal for me personally, but also modeling device independence as a father. That’s the beauty of our online course. It’s a shared experience. Adults need screen time and compulsion checks as much as kids and teens.
I also realized it was a perfect storm of tech convenience and addictive design that makes it easy to get lost on screens. The knowledge from researching the course has changed the way I see the world.
Once you know curtains, you recognize them everywhere. Even a mobile game like Brawl Stars is filled with attention-driven design to keep us locked in. Notifications. Rewards. Trends. Events. It’s all there. I originally started playing it with the boys, and even though they don’t play it much anymore, I kept going. Just this week I was playing the game solo, got frustrated, and asked myself, “Why am I playing this?” Boom. I’m done. Maybe thanks to a preemptive prayer 25 years ago Brawl Stars never became an addiction, but either way another screen time pastime was just busted.
I’m waking up and slowly letting go of my devices. Not because I fell asleep watching a World War 2 documentary on Netflix, but because I’m taking back the driver’s seat.
Driver’s Training for Social Media is accessible to “Behind the Curtains” annual subscribers. What’s included in the online course?
Four Modules with Twelve Videos
Reflection/Discussion Questions
Action Ideas and Additional Links and Resources
Printable Companion Guide with a Screen Time Tracker, Case Study Activity, and Media Plan.